


rather start a family than finish one

by elumish



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Family, Gen, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 17:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10971645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: He knows, knows deep in his soul, that if Potter ever wanted to take over Britain, he could do it, and most of them would probably just cheer along.





	rather start a family than finish one

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [blood will tell but often it tells too much](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7681432) by [elumish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish). 



> This is more or less a sequel of blood will tell but often it tells too much, told from Charlie's POV. It would probably help to read blood will tell first, though it may not be necessary.

Charlie finds Percy sitting on the lawn, robe pulled tight around his shoulders even though it’s uncomfortably hot out, and once he’s sure Percy has seen him he sits beside him, stretching his legs out in front of him.

“Why didn’t you come home earlier?”

Percy shrugs, looking properly miserable. “Wouldn’t have done any good, would it? And I wouldn’t have been able to get anything else done if they thought I hadn’t cut all ties with you lot.”

Ah, yes, Percy’s apparent—and guiltily surprising—heroics, done in a way that was so very Percy. “And how long did you do that for? What you did for the muggle-borns?”

“Since the beginning.” Percy’s shoulders hunch, as though he’s ashamed of what happened, or uncomfortable with it. He’s always been so self-confident, but at the same time he was never as comfortable in his skin as Charlie or Bill, or the twins. “Dad always said—you know what Dad always said, that purebloods had a responsibility to fight back against discrimination against muggles and muggle-borns, because we’re the ones who could. And I couldn’t just—they were going to kill them, or take away their wands. I couldn’t let that happen.”

Charlie reaches out and ruffles Percy’s hair, not commenting on the twitch when his hand gets too close to Percy’s head. They’re all a bit twitchy in a way that he’s seen with people who have been with the dragons too long, but it’s worse, because they’re flinching at people. “Well, I’m proud of you. We all are.”

“Ron hates me.”

Charlie sighs. Ron is getting…troublesome, rotating erratically between pride at being a renowned war hero, guilt at having left Harry, and anger at everything. They’re all on edge—Ginny is withdrawn except when she’s snapping at all of them, Mum won’t stop crying, George is pointedly pretending nothing has happened—and the fact that Ron’s girlfriend is off alone in Australia trying to find her parents isn’t helping, but at some point Charlie’s going to have to sit down and talk to him. He doesn’t think anyone else is up to it.

“Ron doesn’t hate you,” he says instead.

But Percy clearly isn’t listening, because he says, “I know I was a prat, and maybe I deserve it, but there is so much work left to do and so few people left to do it, and I _can’t_ be home all the time, because they need me, and that’s not just arrogance—”

“It’s okay, Perce. Nobody hates you for doing your job.” Particularly now that they understand what he sacrificed and did, too, though he’s not going to say that.

There had been a bit of resentment there, before, at Percy’s ability to go back to work as though nothing had happened, though stopping by Percy’s place and seeing him look as though he hadn’t slept in a month and hadn’t seen sunlight in even longer, skin drawn tight against his face like he wasn’t eating, that had done a lot to ease Charlie’s anger. And he really is proud of Percy, of Percy’s ability to work despite everything, of Percy’s dedication, of everything Percy did.

The two of them have always gotten better than people understood; they’re both dedicated to their work, and Percy had never scoffed at the idea of Charlie wanting to work with dragons. Instead, even when he was little, he had always found every book he could on dragons to give to Charlie, sometimes even spending the little pocket money he had on a book for Charlie’s birthday or for Christmas. For Charlie’s seventeenth birthday he had made a little animated dragon that breathed real fire to keep him warm in the winters of Romania.

And Charlie had always liked to listen to Percy talk about rules and regulations and how everything fit together and worked, because Percy cared so much about it, and it was like one big puzzle that only Percy understood, how one regulation could change what people made, which changed what people bought, which changed what people did.

They can’t go back to being seventeen, though, so Charlie just wraps an arm around Percy’s shoulder and holds him while he trembles.

\--

Charlie had met Harry Potter before, but he thinks he’d never _seen_ him until immediately after the end of the Battle of Hogwarts when, pale and wan, dirt smeared over one side of his face as though he had been lying on the ground, he picks his way over to their family, wraps an arm around Ginny, and lets her cry on him.

He's not looking at Ginny, though, or any of them; instead, his eyes are fixed on Lupin and Tonks, a few feet away, together and alone. There is something devastatingly painful in his eyes, as though he has lost something he hadn’t known he had.

When he speaks, though, he says, “I need to tell Andromeda.”

Mum startles from her tears, trying to perk herself up and be helpful, saying, “Of course, of course, I’ll—”

But Potter just shakes his head and says, gently, “I’ll do it, Mrs. Weasley, thank you. I’m really sorry about Fred.” He detangles himself from Ginny, passing her off to a red-eyed Bill, then says, “I need to see if they need any help, anything I can help with. All of this—it’s on me, mostly, I think.” He turns and takes two steps in the vague direction of McGonagall, then drops like he loses every bone in his legs simultaneously.

Charlie lurches forward and catches him before he can hit the ground, truly alarmed by how light he is and how prominent his bones are against his skin; Charlie is the one who inherited Mum’s desire to feed everyone, though that’s usually focused on dragons instead of humans.

By the time he gets Potter on the ground, he’s awake, pulling away with a muttered apology and a flush high on his cheeks. He starts to scramble to his feet, then stops when Charlie puts a hand on his shoulder and says, “You can sit for a minute.”

Potter blinks at him with those unnervingly green eyes, then says, very seriously, “No, I can’t. I have too much work to do.”

“When was the last time you slept?”

Potter visibly has to think about it, which means the answer is too damn long, then shrugs sullenly and mutters, “I died an hour ago, if that counts.”

Charlie is really glad he said that quietly, because he feels his heart actually skip a beat at that, like a pang in his chest. Harry Potter, dead. Harry Potter, their savior who died for them, yet is sitting beside where he’s crouched, fiddling with a wand that looks unnervingly like You-Know-Who’s. And in that moment, he is absolutely terrified. Because he knows, knows deep in his soul, that if Potter ever wanted to take over Britain, he could do it, and most of them would probably just cheer along.

But right now Potter just looks tired and so very young, so Charlie decides the best option is to treat him like one of his brothers, ruffling his hair—ignoring the way Potter leans into the touch like nobody has ever touched him in his life, because now is not the right time to think about the horror the world Potter just saved has put him through—and says, “Go find a Healer, Potter.”

Potter scowls at him. “I don’t need a Healer.”

“You can get yourself to a Healer,” Charlie says in the voice he uses to tell off stupid recruits, “or I will carry you to one, and the entire room can watch you being carried like a child. And I’ve carried baby dragons, so don’t think I won’t.”

Potter glares petulantly at him for a moment, then levers himself up and wanders shakily off to find a Healer. Charlie watches him go, thinking, Merlin help us if he ever decides he hates us for what we have put him through.

\--

Five weeks after the end of the war, Charlie gets a letter from Newt Scamander.

They’ve had sporadic communication since Charlie first wrote him when in Hogwarts, and as always the letter is meandering and primarily about the creature Scamander is interested in at the moment. This letter is almost entirely about some sort of rare plant-mimicking creature in Indonesia that seems to secrete something akin to Amorentia—Scamander has apparently fallen in love with a rock twice since arriving—with a few references to his sadness at the loss of some of the arcomantula that died in the Battle of Hogwarts.

It is not until just before the signature that Scamander includes the line, _Please thank your brother for freeing the dragon trapped in Gringotts. I have never been so glad to have our work be unnecessary._

And then he signs it with a messy _Newt Scamander_ , underneath which there is a hastily scrawled, _Sorry about your brother._

Charlie reads the entire letter twice, just to make sure he didn’t miss anything—like what the hell Scamander is talking about—then turns to Percy and says, “Tell me you didn’t also free the Gringotts dragon between forging documents for muggleborns.”

Percy blinks at him, then—for the first time in what might be years—bursts into laughter. It’s tinged with hysterics, bringing tears to the corner of his eyes, but it leaves Charlie grinning, his heart feeling a little lighter.

Finally, when he’s done laughing, Percy says, “I thought that was your goal. How many letters have you written to Gringotts about that?”

“Twenty,” Charlie says promptly, then thinks about it and corrects, “Maybe thirty. At least a few of those you helped with.”

“Until you started going to Newt Scamander to help,” Percy says, but he doesn’t sound angry about it, only amused. “Has it been freed? I’ve spent so long on the Floo network and Ministry employee manifests that I suppose all of the gold could have walked out of Gringotts and I might not have heard.”

“Are you talking about Gringotts?” Ron asks, passing through the room. He doesn’t look at Percy, not really, and Charlie knows Percy notices, but none of them say anything. It won’t do any good, not right now. That confrontation can wait. “Did I tell you about when Harry and Hermione and I broke into it, then escaped?” He grins, the light in his eyes meaning that this is one of his heroic war stories, not one of the bad ones that he tells with a smile because he thinks he should, then goes and destroys something afterwards over.

And then Charlie gets it. “You freed the dragon? My whole life I’ve been trying to get that dragon free, and my little brother does it by accident?”

“Perhaps if you had stayed home and done it through changing regulations,” Percy says loftily, and Ron smirks along with him, and maybe they’ll be alright after all.


End file.
